English Cl@ssroom # 18 : Happy Women's Day!

среда, 6 марта 2013 г.

Happy Women's Day!

Happy the 8th of March!

International Women's Day is celebrated every year on March 8. International Women's Day has been observed since 1909. In many places the day does not have a political aspect, and is simply a time for men to express their love for women in a way similar to a mixture of Mother's Day and Valentine's Day. Men present their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc. with flowers and small gifts. In some countries International Women's Day is observed like Mother's Day, where children give small gifts to their mothers and grandmothers. In some countries women get a half day off work. Often, schools will have a celebration where students will honor their teachers.

In 1975 the United Nations also started to recognize this holiday. The UN chooses a political or social theme for the holiday each year. For example, the 2011 theme is ""Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women." In this way, the holiday is a time to look at the social and economic problems women have around the world.

Источник Simple Wikipedia

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Read more about
the history of the International Women's Day

The first national Women's Day was observed on 28 February 1909 in the United States following a declaration by the Socialist Party of America. In August 1910, an International Women's Conference was organized to precede the general meeting of the Socialist Second International in Copenhagen.Delegates (100 women from 17 countries) agreed with the idea as a strategy to promote equal rights, including suffrage, for women. The following year, on 18 March 1911, IWD was marked for the first time, by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. Women demanded that women be given the right to vote and to hold public office. They also protested against employment sex discrimination. Americans continued to celebrate National Women's Day on the last Sunday in February.

In 1913 Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February (by Julian calendar then used in Russia).

In 1917 it was established as an official holiday, but was a working day until 1965.

On May 8 1965 International Women's Day was declared a non-working day in the USSR "in commemoration of the outstanding merits of Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their Fatherland during the Great Patriotic War, in their heroism and selflessness at the front and in the rear, and also marking the great contribution of women to strengthening friendship between peoples, and the struggle for peace."

^{Источник: Wikipedia}